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Meth claims detective, father, hero

The difference, though, is that this person was killed by violence — a meth byproduct that comes along with the blackened teeth, the skeletal faces and the rotted livers.

Clay County Detective David White was gunned down Feb. 16 while raiding a Middleburg house that police believed was being used as a lab for methamphetamine, a drug that ultimately turns its users into walking corpses.

Ted Arthur Tilley, who was killed in the siege, fired on White and eight other deputies, police said. Another detective, Matthew C. Hanlin, was wounded.

White’s slaying sent shock waves throughout the county, a county where new subdivisions are rimmed by woods, pastureland and peacefulness. In places like that, people are more likely to get a gun wielded at them for trespassing, not shot at during a drug raid.

Concocting slow death

But meth users and sellers don’t see calmness there as much as they see it as an opportunity for camouflage.

So they squat in vacant houses — not an impossible feat when one thinks about the scores of suburban homes abandoned in the foreclosure crisis.

They make the drug from ingredients that are used to combat colds and to clean drains, stuff that can be bought in stores and not off a corner.

They concoct a slow death for themselves.

And in Northeast Florida, the crystal meth scourge continues.

According to the Times-Union, meth lab seizures increased by 83 percent from 2010. By December of last year, 75 meth labs had been seized in Nassau, Clay, Duval, St. Johns and Putnam counties. In 2010, 41 labs were seized.

The recipes for meth are also becoming more volatile; a common one is a combination of camp stove fuel, lye, lithium and ammonium nitrate.

They shake it up, and many times they wind up blowing up everything around them.

Crazy.

Then there’s the violence.

The National Center on Drug Intelligence says that meth labs are incubators for it as well; that in addition to operations run by criminal gangs, meth abusers and lab operators often carry sawed-off shotguns and pistols to protect their poison.

In fact, Jacksonville Community Council Inc.’s 2006 report, “Reducing Murder: A Community Response,” warned meth was becoming more of a threat and it was time to prepare for meth-related violence and murder.

And it was that violence that killed White. He died trying to stop others from getting their hands on a substance that would kill them.

That’s why it’s important to see him as a hero instead of a victim.

Certainly, White didn’t go out on that raid thinking that he’d be killed. He, like the rest of the officers, went on that raid intending to purge that neighborhood of something that is almost the equivalent of a toxic dump.

Dangerous chemicals

Meth labs contaminate communities and lives.

The chemicals used to make it are so dangerous that officers who are exposed to it during raids often have to be decontaminated, and it hurts property values because houses that are used as meth labs often are uninhabitable because of the poisons that linger in the walls and insulation and air ducts.

So I hope that anyone out there who is thinking of treating his despair by turning to meth might reconsider, not just because of its danger, but because a man like White, a husband with a 4-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son, lost his life trying to shut down a place that would rob them of theirs.